Popular conceit about learning programming languages

[Pascal Costanza]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Pascal Costanza wrote:
> 
> 
>>Alex Martelli wrote:
>>
>>>Pascal Costanza wrote:
>>>   ...
>>>
>>>>(All the scripting languages I have seen so far rely on C for the hairy
>>>>stuff - and I definitely don't like that. There should be some
>>>>alternative.)
>>>
>>>There is.  Jython, www.jython.org, is an implementation of the Python
>>>language in and for Java -- complete, working, and quite solid.
>>
>>Ah, yes, of course. But you don't want to suggest that Java is a
>>language that is useful for doing hairy and complex stuff. (Sure, most
> 
> 
> More productive than C, at any rate; and we see oodles of "hairy
> and complex stuff" done mostly in C and fairly well too.
> 
> 
> 
>>things become hairy and complex in Java, but that's a totally different
>>story. ;)
>>
>>I mean, Python is already more advanced than Java.
> 
> 
> Oh, I agree with this, but that's not the point.
> 
> 

Er, I have thought that's exactly the point. What do you need a 
backstage language for that is less powerful than the frontstage 
language? (I guess that Jython is useful to take advantage of the Java 
APIs and its platform independence.)

>>So my main vision is to turn Common Lisp into such a kind of common
>>runtime for various languages. That's one reason why I started the JVM
>>implementation in Common Lisp.
>>
>>Does this make some sense?
> 
> 
> Sure.
> 
> 

Thanks. ;)

>>P.S.: I know that this sounds like a major undertaking. ;)
> 
> 
> Not just "sounds" -- surely IS.  But so what -- major undertakings
> do sometimes succeed, after all!-)
> 

:-)


-- 
Given any rule, however ‘fundamental’ or ‘necessary’ for science, there 
are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the 
rule, but to adopt its opposite. - Paul Feyerabend